15. Hirsch Chapter 2 // Neruda // Death or death?    Jeff

Since Neruda personifies death, then why doesn’t he capitalize "death?" How does Neruda personify death? He personifies it by giving it life. Death becomes that person in the shoe without a foot in it. Death becomes that man in the suit with no man in it. The best passage to describe this is this:

(Neruda, "Solo la muerte," in How to Read a Poem, p. 37-38.)

I see our living bodies die in the bed as the sleeping and lifeless form of death feeds off of us to live. Death needs life to survive. Isn’t this fascinating? It’s just like the concept that their must be evil to have good. I am called to the many times where I used to fear of something UNDER my bed. I’m glad my parent’s never read me this poem as a child because then I would have been afraid of something IN my bed! (I will obey William Maxwell’s saying on page 36 and use only one exclamation mark in this post.) There’s a passage in Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem that made me smile and think of something my English teacher wrote on one of my papers last semester that was overflowing with exclamation marks. Hirsch says, "William Maxwell once said that a writer gets two exclamation points in a lifetime, and Bishop [Elizabeth Bishop] has brilliantly used her quota here [in "One Art"] (Hirsch 36). Wow.

Since I’m on the theme of things that don’t seem to be agreeable in Neruda’s poem here’s another one: Is death silent or noisy? Neruda seems so confident when he says death is silent, but then he just contradicts himself later on in the poem by giving death sound. Neruda says, "…filled by the sound of death which is silence" (Neruda, "Solo la muerte," in How to Read a Poem, p. 37). However in the next stanza Neruda gives death sound by the walking of its steps and the hushing sound of its clothes. Wait. Maybe I just solved this conflicting tension myself. If death is dressed in shoes and the suit (physical objects) then of course death is going to make noise. There is no tension in this argument here. Death is silent. The clothes are noisy.

I have to say that some of the stanzas really caught my attention and then some of them just didn’t. I’m thinking that the reason might be the language barrier. I absolutely adored the first stanza, especially "like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves, / as though we were drowning inside our hearts, / as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul" (Neruda, "Solo la muerte," in How to Read a Poem, p. 37). I think why this stanza is so powerful is because of its images. Images are about the only thing that translates across languages. The images of a shipwreck, drowning, hearts, skin, and soul are understood by everyone. Neruda might be using other techniques in the other stanzas such as sound and rhyme that just don’t translate. I love that last line in that stanza especially. It’s like when I’m dreaming that I’m falling. I’m not actually falling, I’m just falling within my head. It’s like a near-death experience in that I almost do fall "out of the skin into the soul." I’m glad I never do though. I always wake up before I hit the ground.

I like the absence in this poem also, just like in Mallarme’s "The Lace Curtain Self-Destructs." Instead of nothing being nothing though, Neruda’s absence is a different type of absence. There used to be something in this absent spot. And now this absence is filled with something, but this something is still nothing (death). Whereas in Mallarme’s poem, absence always was nothing and always will be nothing.

Here is my final topic of conflicting tension in this poem. Why is death’s face green? Green is a symbol of new growth and life. Wait. I think I just solved my own question again. Death is receiving new growth and life in this poem. Death moves out from the black blankets of sleeping and feeds on our living bodies just so death can live. Isn’t this interesting? Death is life. I guess this is the same interesting point that I brought up in my first paragraph. My post has gone full circle which is a good place to stop. And notice, I still have one more exclamation mark yet to use.

There are cemeteries that are lonely

I think he is talking about more than the literal grave stones. Loneliness can be a cemetery if we are dead inside, if our souls are buried beneath the ground. Sometimes are hearts are lonely places that harbor old bones.

graves full of bones that do not make a sound

Once again, his literal interpretation is obvious because bones cannot talk. One question might be, whose voices were silenced, and were they silenced before their death? What bones are we hiding in ourselves?

the heart moving through a tunnel,

SURPRISE! I did not expect the word 'heart' to come after words like 'graves' and 'bones.' I think of a 'heart' as alive, vibrant and full of life--what is it doing in a dark tunnel? the word 'heart' adds a direct connection to one's humanness, soul, and feelings. it brings a sense of life, however sad, into the poem. maybe the heart is holding the fragments of peoples' lives, lost loves, grief, old bones that perhaps are starting to make a sound.

in it darkness, darkness, darkness,

like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves

there is a subject--we--, the author is not talking about the bones' anymore or the 'heart,' there is a direct personal connection. 'going into ourselves'--similar to the heart traveling down the dark tunnel. when we look inside ourselves, sometimes we cannot bear the pain of what we see. this poem (as one reads on) is obviously about death, about dead bodies, etc. but it's fun to look at meanings beyond death as well.

"Truth stands outside the doors of our souls...and knocks." Gregory of Nyssa

Mr. Capra quotes Mr. Maturana in his book The Web of Life: "Living systems are cognititve systems, and living as a process is process of cognition." He can say this because the underlying mechanics of life and consciousness are the same - Autopoiesis - self-making. A living organism creates itself and maintains itself. Each part makes the other parts and is in turn made by the other parts, it is a closed loop of negative feedbacks. Consciousness is the same, it is within the circular organization of our nervous systems, it is how they associate with what is already there to build a world. A truth, not the truth...

Anyway, Life and Poetry seem to be so much the makers, as Hirsch pointed out with his comments on Poiesis. That Poetry is both inspired and transcribed, that it is both already there and created/chanted out. To me, he is saying that the poem has been made in the subconsciouss but we need to transcribe it up a level to voice and word.

But Death is a nothing, it does not make because it is not. It is only defined as an absence of life, but life is not just an absence of death, as i said above. How might a poet connect death with something that makes sense to his art? Can death be a maker, too?

Neruda says no in the first part of his poem...it is only hallow, empty. "A barking where there are no dogs/ a shoe with no foot in it/ a ring with no stone in it, with no/ finger in it" It is hopeless, all this making will end, is doomed to come to an end at the hands of nothingness itself. all of these pieces of consciousness that make and re-make, gone. Pablo Neruda will be ripped and quartered (aka nothing wins) to the ends of the universe never to build another poem.

But then the transition. "Nevertheless its steps can be heard/ and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree." Death is something, if only the unknown, still it is Something. "the face of death is green" Why? because it grows with each death, because it is part of life's cycle? Who knows, who cares...IT has a face!

Now it is something, not nothing, and it is doing. Maybe it is only a broom sweeping, maybe it only dumps us in the garbage, but we can empathize with it because it is doing/making. Death (Absence) cannot escape this poiesis. What a tired universe, with old dead bones, and even death is no rest.

How can death look for dead bodies? Two deaths? It is active, making, completing, finishing what it started. OR is the poet only making it into something it is not? Death happenend, there are dead bodies, now the Maker (poet) has to make something of nothing, and so this whole poem is a wet dream/fantasy of Neruda, and in reality the end is the end, you just can't use poetry to say that any more than you can use the Bible to choke god to death. Right?

Why is death dressed like an admiral? What will be my rank when i go to this admiral, will i outrank it, can i give it orders, or the other way around?? Death only gives one order. "Die" What then...? Neruda wants us to believe it is not the end. He smooshes both images of Christian heaven and Greek Hades into one image, a river (Styx) that goes up not down. Is everyone right about death then, does belief condition reality? Do we all have a piece of the unknown, the entirity of it? Death is the unknown and they are both nothing and something at the same time. We know what they are not, but what are they? Maybe an answer here - when you know something it crosses over from the unknown to the known. The ACT of knowing transforms that which was unknown. Is it the same with death? The ACT of dying transforms death? Death is the one who rides the river over to you? An Admiral is a sailor, right? If the unknown becomes that which it was defined as the absence of (the known) does death become life the moment it is experienced. The admiral sets sail.

Hirsch is right to point out Neruda's confusion within and about his own poem. It is the condition of humanity to be something that you don't understand, and to do things that have meaning, but what is that meaning??? But Hirsch thinks the message is "We are mere residents on earth." I get a different message. We are gods, makers, and when we encounter the very absence of making, well we make something of that too. We are far mor than mere residents, we are builders and movers. Homo Faber.

This poem by Neruda is filled with simply amazing images. I am choosing to talk about the last stanza because it is a very fitting ending to the poem.

Death is inside the folding cots

Immediately when i read this line my minds eye conjures images of soldiers in some field barracks sleeping in row upon row of drab military green folding cots. Death is sleeping amongst the ranks. No one knows who will be next to go and everyone tries not to think about it. Some pray for divine protection, some carry lucky charms, some drink to forget, but all the people in that room face death. Some of them are dead already, they just do not know it.

in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:

Death is sudden. We all think it is asleep so we tread very lightly, lest we wake it. Just as we think we are in the clear and have crept past its bedchamber, it breathes (the black milk of the deathfugue). In most cases death is not at all expected and all the more tragic for that reason. One reason this poem speaks to me more than the others we read for today is that i spent an hour tonight listening to a friend who lost her twelve year old neighbor when a building collapsed on him. We can never be prepared for death, even when it is expected and for the better, it always catches us off guard.

where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

A foghorn sounds. Here, as in much of the rest of the poem Neruda uses sea and ship images for death. Before the coffins of the dead travelled on the river. I think that in this case Neruda is referring more to the living than the dead. All of our rivers end in death. That much we cannot escape. Everytime someone dies in my life, it really makes me aware of my own mortaility and my impending demise. Death is a part of all of us, and there is no place to hide.

Neruda's "Solo la Muerte" is one of the most powerful poems I have ever read. The mood and tone of the poem are at the same time tense and peaceful, fearful and hopeful. Some of the analogies and metaphors compare polar opposites, but do so in a way that creates harmony within the poem and between death and life. For example:

The face of death is green-

Incredible. Death is life. Life is death. Neruda seems to be looking directly into the face of death and sees new life. Deeply religious and understanding of the necessity of death. Hirsch claims that this poem is "filled with such black sounds," but it seems to me that Neruda is describing life (Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, 38). Life is necessary for death, and death for life, just as the two opposite sides of a coin are necessary for a coin to exist. Incredible and powerful insight.

And the look death gives is green-

Not only is death life, but even the shadow, the glance of death reminds us of how transient and precious life is. This is not a somber poem lamenting death, but a call to life. As Neruda calls in the second stanza, "Death is in the bones," he reminds the reader that life is a terminal illness. We are all dying, always. Everyday takes us one step closer to our death, so now is the time to live life.